Firefox 45: Find out what is new

Firefox 45 has been released on March 8, 2016 to the stable channel. The release overview lists all major changes of the release for Firefox desktop and mobile versions.

All Firefox channels get updated at the same time which means that Beta, Developer Edition, Nightly and Firefox ESR releases are also updated on the same day.

This moves Firefox Beta to version 46, the Developer Edition to version 47, Nightly to version 48, and Firefox ESR to 45.0 (with 38.7 offered as well).

The new version marks the beginning of a new Firefox Extended Release Cycle giving companies and individuals 12 weeks to upgrade from version 38.x to the new 45.x branch before version 38.8 is retired.

Executive Summary

Firefox ESR 45.0 is available. Firefox Hello and Service Workers are both disabled in Firefox ESR 45.0.

Tab Groups are removed in Firefox 45. We recommend the Tab Groups add-on to keep on using the feature in Firefox 45 and beyond.

Add-on signing is enforced in Firefox 45 Stable, but it can be disabled in this version but that preference is to be removed with Firefox 46.

Firefox 45 download and update

Firefox 45 has been released and is currently distributed to systems running older versions of the web browser if update checks and automatic updates are enabled on those systems.

You can run a manual check for updates in the following way to speed things up:

Tap on the Alt-key on your keyboard, and select Help > About Firefox.

This opens information about Firefox and will run a check for updates automatically.

If the Firefox 45 update is found, it is either downloaded and installed automatically or on user request.

You may download Firefox directly from Mozilla to install the new version on a system or upgrade existing versions to Firefox 45 or in the case of other Firefox channels their new versions respectively.

A preference has been added to Firefox to block .onion resources at the DNS level. To disable the blocking, set network.dns.blockDotOnion to false.

Developer Changes

jar protocol support to directly link to files in ZIP archives has been disabled by default. It can be re-enabled by setting the value network.jar.block-remote-files to false on about:config. (see 1215235 for additional information)

EV certs valid for more than 27 months will be treated as DV certs. The previous period was 39 months. (see 1222903 for more information)

Firefox for Android

The following list of changes are unique to Firefox for Android. Most changes are shared with the desktop version of Firefox.

Image loading control

Firefox for Android 45 features a new option to control when images get loaded in the browser. Set to always load images by default, it can be set to only load images over Wi-Fi, or never.

To configure the preference do the following:

Tap on the three-dots menu at the top and select Settings from the menu.

Select Advanced on the main Settings page.

Tap on "show images", and select one of the three options: always, only over Wi-Fi, blocked.

The feature can be used to reduce data usage while using the browser which can be useful especially if you are on a tight data plan, or in an area with bad reception.

Camera & Microphone setting for Family accounts

Firefox for Android supports family-friendly profiles on systems running the mobile operating system. It allows an admin to define features that restricted family members have access to. A new addition in Firefox 45 is a control to allow or block the use of camera or microphone on websites that allow real-time communication.

Other Firefox 45 for Android changes

The url is no longer included when selected text on web pages is shared.

Super Toasts have been replaced with Snackbar, the latter supporting actions in notifications.

The app settings were optimized and re-organized.

Firefox 45.0.1

Mozilla released Firefox 45.0.1 on March 16, 2016.It is considered a bug fix release. The browser update made the following changes or fixes:

Fix a regression causing search engine settings to be lost in some context (1254694)

Bring back non-standard jar: URIs to fix a regression in IBM iNotes (1255139)

XSLTProcessor.importStylesheet was failing when <import>was used (1249572)

Fix an issue which could cause the list of search provider to be empty (1255605)

Fix some loading issues when Accept third-party cookies: was set to Never (1254856)

Disabled Graphite font shaping library

Firefox 45.0.2

Mozilla released Firefox 45.0.2 on April 11, 2016 to the stable channel. The company announced earlier that it would postpone the release of Firefox 46 by a week, and push out this bug fix release instead to fix several bugs in older versions of the browser.

Fix an issue impacting the cookie header when third-party cookies are blocked (1257861)

Firefox 45 Stable is the newest version of the Firefox web browser. Find out what has changed or is new in Firefox 45 for the desktop and Android.

Author

Martin Brinkmann

Publisher

Ghacks Technology News

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About Martin Brinkmann

Martin Brinkmann is a journalist from Germany who founded Ghacks Technology News Back in 2005. He is passionate about all things tech and knows the Internet and computers like the back of his hand.You can follow Martin on Facebook, Twitter or Google+

Don’t you find think firefox logo is like stylized crescent crouching over the earth? Pale moon could also be reference to that islam symbol thing (which by the way has nothing to do with islam just like star of david has nothing to do with jews or judaism).

The truth about the Firefox logo is quite funny. It all happened in 1931 on a rainy afternoon. Aldous Huxley, author of the famous “A Brave New World” had that day been slightly too generous with Brandy and, between heaven and hell, scrawled a mysterious symbol. His grand-children found the drawing many years later in the middle of a Dick Tracy cartoon magazine, gave it to the sister-in-law of a close friend, whom offered it later on to a charity business. From there on no one knows how it landed at Mozilla. Quite an odyssey. This is the plain truth and I don’t endorse it.

What are the real improvements in this version? Frankly. Unfortunately, firefox started as innovative browser is now a pathetic dead duck… I’m using presently Chromium 51.0.2669.0 (64-bit). I switched to Chromium since the Firefox version 35 and I never regret this decision and no “Firefox nostalgia” will change this.

Right. Because chromium is soooo innovative by comparison. What’s the last real innovation chromium/chrome brought into the table? Nowadays they just fix some bugs here and there and bump the version number. I’m not saying firefox is super innovative but chromium/chrome is not either.

You can disable Add-On Signing in Firefox 45 as well as in Firefox 45 ESR. To do so follow these steps: I. Update to Firefox 45 ESR. II. Type “about:config” into the address bar. III. Click on “I’ll be careful, I promise!” IV. Type “xpinstall.signatures.required” into the bar on top of the site. V. Set this preference to ‘false’ via double click. > You are done, the Signing Check is disabled from now on. However, please note that Firefox 46 will be the first release with mandatory Add-On-Signing as this about:config option is going to be removed. Whether Firefox 52 ESR will keep this option or not is currently unknown.

That option isn’t present in the one I downloaded. “xpinstall.signatures.required” is not in about:config and even if you create it and set it to false it has no effect. Unsigned add-ons will not install.

I’ll probably never need to use unsigned add-ons, but them always erring on the side of overriding user choice is a death spiral. About:permissions is gone, how long until they remove about:config because “it only confuses the average user”?

The last Firefox ESR 38.7.0 is out aswell….. Probably my last Firefox version that I’ll use w/o that nagging unsigned add-on detected. Or some other unneeded nuisance bloat for a couple of months before I’ll completely drop Firefox on all my systems.

Actually 45.0 ESR is supposed to remove some of the rubbish that was added recently, and because it’s ESR branch, the add-on signing requirement should not be there either. I’m looking forward to 45.0 ESR. It was supposed to be released today alongside 38.7 ESR.

ESR FTW :D

And don’t forget to remove the system add-ons (crap features) yourself after updating. Martin has articles about this stuff somewhere.

You can update to Firefox 45 ESR. This is how I got around the Mozilla-crap: 1.) Disable Signing Check: I. Update to Firefox 45 ESR. II. Type “about:config” into the address bar. III. Click on “I’ll be careful, I promise!” IV. Type “xpinstall.signatures.required” into the bar on top of the site. V. Set this preference to ‘false’ via double click. > You are done, the Signing Check is disabled from now on.

2.) Disable Hello and Pocket: I. Set “loop.enabled” to ‘false” in about:config. Hello is now disabled. II. Set ‘browser.pocket.enabled’ to “false’ in about:config. Pocket is now disabled.

You are done. All the crap is turned off. Firefox 38.8 will be the last version of Firefox 38, so you should really consider an upgrade.

That option isn’t present in the one I downloaded (45.0). “xpinstall.signatures.required” is not in about:config and even if you create it and set it to false it has no effect. Unsigned add-ons will not install.

I’ll probably never need to use unsigned add-ons, but them always erring on the side of overriding user choice is a death spiral. About:permissions is gone, how long until they remove about:config because “it only confuses the average user”?

Well, it should be there. It is supposed to be removed in Firefox 46 or higher. Wonder why it isn’t present in your browser… anyway, if you don’t need any unsigned Add-Ons it probably won’t matter. If you need unsigned Add-Ons in the future you might also want to try Waterfox/Cyberfox/Pale Moon, all of which do allow these. I can totally see Mozilla removing about:config as simple users are their new target group now. A bad development indeed… When Firefox 45 ESR is killed I will have Pale Moon as my main browser.

@Dave: If I remember corrrectly unsigned Add-Ons are blocked in Firefox ESR by default as well. This means you have to disable it, contrary to your statement. The only difference to the release channel is that Firefox ESR offers an actual about:config option to disable it. As Firefox 45 ESR is nearly identical with the normal Firefox 45 nobody knows whether Mozilla will still keep this option in Firefox 52 ESR, seeing that it will removed in the release channel from Firefox 46 on. Anyway, 3rd Party Builds like Cyberfox, Waterfox or Pale Moon don’t require Add-On Signing, so the questioner might also want to try those.

Under the contacts mechanism, each time you initiate a call, how can STUN/ICE server know how to route your call? Both you and the person you’re calling had to 1) have fxaccount and 2) currently be logged into fxaccount (so that the STUN server knows the current IP address or both parties and can route the call).

The changeover, to a “send a link” mechanism, removes barriers-to-adoption. It is also more privacy-friendly — the connecting server only knows/logs “IP#1 connected to IP#2 at suchandsuch datetime”.

webrtc was (and is) billed as an “open standard”, a part of HTML5 spec. Can a firefox user, via Hello, now send a link to, and connect with, a Chrome or Chromium user? If so, mozilla is approaching their stated goal of providing an alternative, opensource, Skype killer. If not, considering firefox’s paltry marketshare, is Hello is still a failure? Toward projecting the degree of adoption, consider that both users would need to have Skype installed… so the necessity for both to have firefox installed instead probably won’t hamper adoption.

Hopefully the new contact-less mechanism opens the door ~~ users will be able to install an extension (eventually a plethora of extensions to choose from) which utilizes an alternate STUN/ICE server and provides overlaid “contacts” functionality along with various other features. Connected via your workplace STUN server, you’re free of the prospect of friends/kin calling… and various private servers will be able to scale up, ala google hangouts, to accommodate larger conference calls.

Warning to everyone! My Firefox broke down in many ways after updating to 45.0 (right mouse click context menu / etc.). I have no strength to do a deep investigation now. Tomorrow I’ll report back. Fuck. I’m starting to hate computers more and more, everything is broken nowadays and once you figure out & solve one problem, 2 new problems have risen.

Before every update, I make a quick local copy of my portable firefox (I also have backups on external, but they’re like once a week or when I feel like it – big arsed batch of stuff using FreeFileSync). If you’re not portable, just make a quick copy of your profile, that way you can roll back (i.e reinstall the older version, replace profile folder). I’ve had FF go a bit weird on me a couple of times (eg drag & drop to explorer stopped working), so I just usually grab a new install and replace the profile folder and the issues are resolved. That’s not to say that a profile can’t get corrupt.

mine as well Pete— 3 addon’s not allowed & the theme, home page changed as well as certain tick boxes in Options no bookmarks tabmix plus settings removed , download status bar gone its like a new install :(

– Noscript no longer seems able to work with Flash and click to play as it acts like one clicked on a url link versus allowing the blocked content. Opening the Noscript options menu can be iffy on occassion also.

– On Hulu. It will no longer recognize my being logged in whenever I try to watch a show even though it is logged in (says my name, queue, favorities, account info, shows you watch etc). It instead acts like I do not have an account at all so I am stuck not having access to any paid content, have commercials, no HD, etc.

Anyone know how to fix those issues on my end or is this strictly something with Firefox 45?

Yes, I had similar problems with Firefox 45 and Hulu. Also my Hulu videos started playing with adds, even though I subscribe to their add free package. I called Hulu and after trying various steps to no avail I reverted back to the FF 44 and it solved all the problems. Hopefully either FF or Hulu will fix the incompatibility issue soon.

Whenever I try Firefox again (Im using Chrome since 2 years) I notice how terribly inefficient it is. Just typing in the bar you notice how searching through cached search history I get noticeable lags. Then I load up 20 tabs, and using CTRL-W to close a random tab gives me another noticeable lag while Firefox closes the tab and displays the next tab in line.

It just feels like terrible software design, probably weighted down by old software components from Firefox 1-3 releases. They need to burn down this ancient foundation and start from scratch. Releasing Firefox 45 or even Firefox 55 won’t make it any better because at the end of the day its still old, slow Firefox.

I tried 45ESR today. Performance was terrible. It always took more than TEN seconds to start, tabs loaded very slowly, and it would freeze several times a minute.

…I’m guessing something major changed? Maybe that multicore thing?

On the plus side a number of small issues seem to have been fixed, and some pointless things I never liked are gone. However, since this version is completely unusable I restored the last version, which is pretty great.

I have a weird “symptom” with Firefox 45 (OS X 10.9.5; NoScript; updates set to “never”).

The “date modified” flag keeps changing. That is, you look at “/applications/Firefox” in the Finder and date modified is no longer the install date. I added the latest OS X security update recently, but I don’t think that’s the problem; other applications aren’t doing the same thing. If you control click on FF to see the package contents, the mod date on the MacOS folder changes as well, but the dates on the contents of the folder do not. Very odd. HAS ANYONE ELSE SEEN THIS?

BTW: I had to manually install this update since it wouldn’t auto install on request. The application seems correctly signed by Mozilla. Firefox appears to be running fine other than the date issue.

I would say more scary. Because we are heading faster and faster into a direction where only one engine tells what is right and what is wrong and how things should be done.

And that engine will be Blink from Google Chrome. Not at all wrong to say we are almost there. While i dislike Mozilla for all their Chrome ambitions, i do just hope they are clever enough to avoid a new monopoly and have at least have that healthy amount of good common sense to not fall into that trap. Developing with Electron would be for sure the lazy and more simple way to develop a new browser, but as it is basically Chromium, a step like that would be highly counter productive for the freedom of the web.

Sure it is experimentation, but at the same time they say also the same about Servo. Hopefully they make at least one good decision when the time is coming to decide what is the next step for Firefox (which will be no matter how it turns out not a happy future for power users who want built inside customization features into the browser core).

I can not access the “Help” Menu (on the toolbar menu bar) on FF 45. I am not a super duper advanced FF user but I never considered myself a retard. Could someone suggest a way for me to check where the issue for this comes from please? I thought FF had a restart without addons feature but I can’t seem to find it. (maybe in the help menu?lol)

About gHacks

Ghacks is a technology news blog that was founded in 2005 by Martin Brinkmann. It has since then become one of the most popular tech news sites on the Internet with five authors and regular contributions from freelance writers.